The Goldilocks Theory of Employee Management

How can you get your employee relationships "just right"? Tips from the human expert will show you the way.


It's one of the classic "Goldilocks" problems in running any business.
If you push your employees too hard to get results, they resent you. They talk about you behind your back and complain bitterly about working in a "sweatshop environment" where their lives are sacrificed to make you rich. The first chance they get, they bolt to another company, probably one of your competitors. Read any installment of the cartoon strip "Dilbert," and you'll see exactly what I mean.

Yet if you're too nice to them and bend over backwards trying to make your workplace as happy, nurturing and fun-filled as you possibly can, what happens then? Your employees start thinking you're a "soft touch" and start taking advantage of your good nature. They ask for more and more, even though what you're giving them as compensation is quite generous by industry standards. They start showing up late for work—or not at all—and play to your sympathies when you try to pull them up short or criticize them. They start second-guessing your management decisions, and insist that you justify everything you want or need them to do
How can you get your employee relationships "just right"?

How can you build a positive, healthy working environment for your employees without giving away the store?
Here are some of human expert's tips on successfully handling employee relations:

You're not "the Boss." "employees should be thinking of the company and its well-being, and not dealing with me as an individual at all," today's workers have been taught to question authority at all levels and will resent you presenting yourself as an authority figure. "You can't just tell people to do something because 'I'm the boss', because that won't cut it anymore,"
The key is to make sure your employees don't see you as someone who is generous or stingy, but rather someone who is smart and able enough to build a successful company and who will make sure that if the company is prosperous, the workers who make a difference will become prosperous as well.
You're not their friend, either. When you are close to certain individuals, and that was sometimes a problem , like when you had to fire them." The importance of setting up policies once a company has grown beyond the startup phase, and letting employees know that their success will depend on their adherence to the policies—and not their personal relationship with you.
Make the company the "third person in the room." "Employees should be thinking of the company's well being, not mine," explaining that makes a point of telling employees that such-and-such a goal will benefit the company as a whole, and therefore benefit everyone. "You put the company in the room along with you and the employee, and you tell the employee that if that artificial third person is happy, you'll be happy as well,"
Establish group incentives, rather than individual incentives. Human expert feels strongly that bonuses and other incentives should be based on the company's performance, not the individual employees' performance. As an example, productivity bonus: "You set output goals for the tufting or the dying operation, and make sure people know if the whole plant produces more product per employee-hour and meets the quota, then everyone benefits; if the quota is surpassed, everyone in that plant gets a bonus for the week." One of the side benefits of this approach is that all employees are guaranteed to be tough on slackers, whiners and other drags on productivity, knowing that substandard performance will affect them personally.
Be humane. "It gets really hot in the summertime," so you will put fans and water coolers all over the place in every one of our plants, as well as 'blow fans' with evaporated water that feel like air conditioning." You should do things like that, , without your employees having to ask.

Make your employees "see the logic." you shouldn't have to explain yourself constantly to your employees, it's important to make employees see the logic in what you're doing. "If people can see why what you're doing makes sense, if they can see the logic of what you're doing and that it does make business sense and does create value,"
"they won't view it as an arbitrary 'order from the boss' that has to be challenged."
Or, as Benjamin Franklin said back in 1776 as British forces approached the fledging colonial capital of Philadelphia, "Gentlemen, if we do not hang together in this time of crisis, be assured that we will all hang separately."